Moshe's Journal Jhapa, Nepal, November 1997
Nov 6 , 1997 Jahpa ,East Nepal
An amazing overnight shift to golden sunrise rice field expanses
with straw thatch roof hut villages. Country farm houses,
second floor houses built on what seem sagging rickety pole
structures. Little shops roadside raised on short stilts,
bicycles, rickshaws, amongst banana palms and other trees.
REM blasts the morning music path and the in bus discussion
beyond the amazement is whether the snowy distant peaks are
Mt Everest or not. Another checkpoint poll. Another long bamboo
pivot pole with an ancient rusted oil drum attached to the
pivot end as a counterweight. A thin rope attached to the
long end and is controlled by the man with the pad of blue
toll tickets in his flimsy shack. Itahahri crossroads, a jumble
of stalls, roadside restaurants, parked buses and insistent
human activities amongst houses with sides painted in beer
colors. St Miguel, Tiborg and Oshi Noodle advertisements.
An old man with creased legged housed in baggy white shorts
walks a goat on a leash above his rice field moats, animal
and man unified lazy pace. Most but not all houses built on
stilts, some tiltting slightly, others are more modern structures
of cement or brick. Lots of men dressed in India whites amongst
canopy of rich greens and golds, buffalos plowing fields,
and cows lying about. Asia it is.
"Bhanu Memorial English School" sign. Rick shaw
crowded with five stacked kids faces. Bicycle powered mini
vans blue with white lettering"school van." Destination
town Damak is here, 9:15am. White toyota pick-up jeeps of
Caritas and UNHCR pass by movie signs poorly plastered on
leaned over billboards advertising "JUdge Mujrim and
Jewel Thiefs."
Camp 1 Belangi
Wild show in straw thatch Bhutanese refugee camp where the
audience kept coming closer in pulsating waves. Now there
is a humming fan at the Hotel Deurali as 8 of us sit down
to dinner. Dalbat.
There are too many kids to do the soap bubble airplane. Men
use harsh sticks to push back audience. I try the soft method,
but each time I enter the arena theer is complete pandamonium
in the audience.
Today we played for 1500 people. With half that many again
trying to climb over the backs of the back row to be able
to see.
The interior design of the Hotel Deurali's restaurant hasn't
been touched since the fifties. An incoming letter box mounted
on the wall is painted yellow with little wooden slots with
letters of the alphabet painted in red. It looks like it hasn't
been used for twenty years. big mix up on the food order and
i end up eating this chicken chily instead of chicken curry
and my stomach is on fire and doe not here the Catalan comments
on Fellini. There is no more mutton but the waiter doesn't
tell those who ordered it, he just doesn't serve it. Robert
finds himself eating Algo's chow mein. The waiter when we
ask him (translated by Savin) simply says 'sorry' with a shy
smile. As Indian disco beat filters past painted cement columns,
red lettering an yellow, ceiling fans and tiny 30 watt yellow
hanging in cobwebbed fixture and a seacoast poster hung at
a wide angle sheathed in age plastic and in the poster's lower
corner in white lettering a saying "A blessing down from
above."
There is also another painted panel yellow with smaller green
lettering "Hotel Deurali Notice Board" full of faded
pastel newspaper articles about angry gurkahs murch for justice,
various color snapshots and a few "Visit Nepal98"
slogans in English and Nepali script. The board is lit up
by a naked fluorescent bulb which is the brightest light in
the place. Our dead tired crew board the bus to head back
to Ratan's house to Janet Jackson moaning. We are crashing
on the floor of two ground floor rooms in this large cement
three floor pastel blue house . The lower two floors are rented
by Ratan's organization AHURU, the landlord lives in the upper
floor. There is a locked iron grill gate on the staircase
between the two.
Interview with Ratan about Bhutanese Refugees
NGO's providing assistance: nepal Red Cross, Lutheran World
Service, Oxfam, Save the Children-UK, World Food Program,
Caritas(LIteracy and Income Generation Projects.) These projects
include Soap making, blankets, Weaving, Tailoring that are
then bought by the Red Cross then redistributed to refugees.
Refugees in principle do not have the right to work outside
the camps but some do. AMDA, a japanese NGO runs the hospital.
Everything is administered and coordinated by the UNHCR, Robert
Cooper from the UK is in charge there. The camps are no longer
in the emergency phase, but in the maintenance phase.
Ratan says the UN s not doing enough, it should be putting
pressure on Bhutan but it does not want to confront India.
There is political mileage to know how to maintain political
sovereignity.
With great enthusiasm Ratan tells us about a peace march that
took place in 1996. India said no to the marchers, you can
not come through our country. 1700 people were put in jail
for one week, some up to four months. the government said
they would let the marchers go if they would sign incriminating
papers, they refused. The case went to courts, who ordered
unconditional release of the marchers. Ratan said that the
march was a big success, that it got the attention of the
media.
Rice is planted in July and August and is being harvested
now. The pontoon stilts that all the houses are built on are
for flooding and wild animals. Thirty years ago this area
was full of forest, elephants, lions and tigers. The big problem
for the Bhutanese is that the refugees are "peaceful,
clean people." If there were disease and bloodshed, the
internaltional community would react.
Kids are running alongside the bus as we arrive at Belangi
2. It is the biggest of the seven refugee camps. 22000 people.
There are little gardens next to the bamboo houses with rice
straw thatched roofs. What seems like adobe foundations for
the monsoons, rows upon rows of little houses. Flowers painted
on trucks faded blue. There is a big crowd in front of the
health center. Ratan who is sitting next tome thinks that
they are cuing up for medicine. He is wearing pilot sunglasses
and white E.C. Humanitarian Office logo cap smoking a cigarette.
Judging by his constant good nature, on would not think that
he spent three years in solitary confinement as a prisoner
of conscience. He tells me that the medicine iis free. "
Most painful thing is that the people can't work, they are
dying to go home. They have their home, their land in Bhutan.
"
Litlle kids waving as bus goes by, waving and screaming.
Others watching hands on hips. Some of the little ones are
waving while staring straight ahead, vacantly. In front or
on the side of each house we pass is a little garden with
small trees growing. Oxfam gives seed(papaya, banana) and
technology to help people start gardens. We reach a huge open
grassy field, 3 or 4 football fields large. I look back from
my window and I see a large scattering of kids running this
way. No doubts about where we are going to perform.
There are over 5000 spectators, mostly kids, squirming and
pushing in waves that threaten to topple over, loud and totally
crazy, impossible to control the situation. We have t stop
the show to get the whole audience to sit down as it has become
pure chaos. A man with a huge bamboo pole is sweeping over
the heads of the spectators, threatening to knock over anyone
in the pole's path. The policeman are swatting kids over the
heads with sticks to get them to sit down. I watch a young
man in rage, screaming as he tears a line through the crowd,
knocking over everyone not sitting down in his path.
The Desastrosus are starting over now and it seems to be
more controlled as I hear huge laughs and relative silence.
When I went out to play my ukulele I found myself racing from
one side of the audience to the other just trying to be heard.
And now a true moment of quiet. The sun is covered by a cloud,
a repite from serious heat. Not opressive by local standards
but still a sweatbath for us. Little faces are peering in
from the crack between the bus and the curtains: we have positioned
the bus right behind the bakstage box with the doorway positioned
to allow us access from the box. Juanillo bangs his head on
the metal strut support structure as he descends from the
bus.
Over 1000 people on a hillside a little further back from
the main audience circle and Robert comes and tells me that
they are all laughing even though I look tiny from so far
away. I break a cigar box while kicking it as I try to pick
it up. The show is a great success, there is an aura of glee.
The kids rush us afterwards and I find myself shaking little
outstretched hands. Actually they all start grabbing at my
hands in huge outbursts of laughter until I have to pull away
to keep my shoulder in its socket. We have lunch at the camp,
they have set up two picnic tables inbetween rows of houses
and we all sit down on small bamboo stools. We are served
a huge plate of rice, then dal and some delicious cooked green
vegetables. The food is spicy and we are continually offered
more.
A crowd has gathered to watch us eat and the grandfather
of the house has a stick and occasionally chases the kids
away. Evidently the stick is an acceptable form of behaviour
management. Lots of good humor circulates and its a tough
time finishing all the fod on the plate. We are honored by
the quantities of food as we have been told that fammilies
will trade excess rice for another set of clothes. They only
get one a year.
Denmark, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Austria are all main
nation donors to Bhutan, as is India. the US put pressure
on Bhutan until '94 when it opened up economic cooperation
with the US, and since then no pressure or money from the
US. Happy to provide millions of dollars for the refugees
but don't want to take any political steps.
After lunch we move ver to Belangi 2 Extension camp, slightly
smaller and reight next door. It is the same story again,
kids running after the bus, using the bus as a backdrop, huge
numbers of spectators, several police and other men patrol
the inside perimeters of the audience with sticks. I am writing
during Desastrosus's first number, as this morning, I have
a good ten minutes sitting amongst boxes of props unable to
go out of the backstage area without attracting far too much
attention. I'm set up against the side wall where there is
just enough shade to cover me, it is hot. i can see a slight
side view of the audience through the side entrance. It seems
to be getting out of control again, and we might have to stop
the show again, despite the fact that we have made the audience
circle twice as wide as yesterday. Yes it is stopped, no it's
not. I hear Ratan giving commands from the top of the bus
to the controllers as the audience has moved in on the right
side, It's pretty wild and scary to watch the audience, a
mass being pushed around. They smile, laugh then when they
are almost about to topple over, their expression changes
as they shout, push back then immediately refocus on the show.
The walk through the refugee camp was beautiful and touching.
A young pen pal lettter came my way. I read it. A young boy
tells how his family was forced to leave their home. He asks
for someone to send him a soccer ball. The letter shakes me,
tears come to my eyes. Lulu and Alvaro come rushing back for
the water sprayer, Juanillo is out there on the tall unicycle
now, itis time for me to make my second entrance where I go
out and stand on my suitcase, do silly things then do my hat
routines. The audience seems to have settled down now, there
are 4 policeman circling, two brown and two blue, and waves
of laughter reign.
Children running alongside the bus as we leave, they are
waving, we are waving. It is difficult to leave. There is
a Nepalesse rap hip-hop song blasted on the radio based on
a sampled "I've got the power". We put on Bob Marley
as we pass through planted thin treed forest on the edge of
the camp, sun low filtering shadows and gold colorings on
nearby rice fields. It's harvest time and we pass a whole
family attending to a huge pile of rice grain next to a small
hut sized pile of dried rice stalks. After the show at the
camp we are offered tea at the Health Center canteen. I meet
an old man whom I had exchanged Namaste greetings with earlier.
He gestures to the ground, then the sky and then his heart.
Ratan steps in to translate for me. He (the man) wants me
to thank those who have provided all these facilities for
them and the food to eat. I look though his dusty glasses
at kind eyes.
After the show I again allow myself to be swarmed by the
kids, shaking as many hands as I can, then switching to Namastes,
joining my hands in prayer palms touching, then lifting them
to my forehead. I have developed several variations now where
I join the back of my hands together rather than the palms.
The kids find this very funny and imitate me. Then i take
it further wrapping my arms around each other so that I can
get the palms to join again, almost flat, like a rubber man.
The kids all try to imitate me, some with success.
The bus heads back to Damak and our sleeping quarters. Bob
Marley is now singing "Getup Stand Up, stand up for your
rights". We all sing along and I think of Ratan's three
years in Bhutanese prisons and the ironies in relation to
the song. These people are standing up but there is no one
to listen. The sunset's golden sky melts into the distant
mountains, and I hope for the promise of positive ahead.
nov 8
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